The second SEAT León Eurocup race held today at the Brands Hatch track was declared over after only seven of the fourteen laps were completed. The winner of the race was Spanish teenager Pepe Oriola who, at only 16, took his well-deserved first place, his first in this championship, over current leader Michael Rossi and Eoin Murray.

The short-lived race was stricken with accidents. The most serious took place in the seventh lap by Portugal’s Francisco Carvalho. He lost control of his car and rammed into the barrier at high speed, causing him to somersault onto the track. The car sustained considerable damage, but the safety cage withstood the impact and Carvalho escaped unscathed. A few laps previously, Russian driver Alexey Dudako had also slammed into the wall and thanks to his car’s safety devices he also walked away unhurt.

Carvalho and Oriola shared the first starting line and vied for first place after a clean start until Dudakalo’s accident brought out the safety car. Oriola was in the lead when the car made it back to the boxes, with Carvalho losing positions to Rossi and Murray. The second accident took place four laps later and race organisers decided not to resume the race, giving the first three half of the usual points for only completing half of the scheduled laps.

In yesterday’s first race, British driver Daniel Welch benefited from his familiarity of the track to win a very tight competition, as Portugal’s Duarte Felix da Costa was on his tail the entire fourteen laps of the race.

Welch started out in pole position and took an early lead followed closely by Duarte, with a one-second margin for the first ten laps. At that point Welch widened the gap to 3.5 seconds and the two finished first and second. Behind them, Nordstrom and Murray were battling it out for third place until Gabor Weber ran into Nordstrom and put them both out of the race, so in the end Welch and Da Costa were joined on the podium by Murray.